“Genuinely from the ground up” was the way the new social enterprises, announced last week, will be. At Synuron, being a social enterprise means we are developing the very ethos of how new public services will be delivered. The commitment of employees who own their enterprises translates into determined innovation and imagination to succeed. A total focus on customers and value.
As a leader and chief executive, I am learning that this entrepreneurial approach brings opportunities that have hitherto evaded my previous roles in public organisations. I truly hope that we can give the support these new organisations need to succeed. Many thousands of public sector staff are excited about the prospect and the career transition will be challenging but worth it, as they become liberated from central control and are able to focus on value and services for their patients and citizens.
I spent last week judging two of the Personnel Today Awards 2010 for HR use of Technology and Innovation in Recruitment. They show that in the face of a challenging economic climate, innovation thrives and those organisations who were shortlisted have leveraged better productivity and quality by making courageous changes. Some of them are truly groundbreaking, fantastic new practices for our industry. All of the HR practitioners should be recognised and applauded for delivering improvements during this last year. Well done to Personnel Today for showcasing them .
I have been involved with these awards for some five or six years now and they are a benchmark for sure. My own learning at Synuron about what great technology looks like in HR and also how innovative we can become in talent management and resourcing is enhanced by the small role I play. Good luck and well done to all those shortlisted.
I also spent a few days last week on “Turnaround …….and Transformation” as in the organisations we are working with, this is a big theme. How to resource effectively and for better quality? How to transform and redesign services? How to make services profitable, viable even? There is much work to do, especially automating tasks that technology can now deliver, speeding up the process of people management and raising the bar on performance. We are automating the process of post redeployment and vacancy approval. Developing talent pools and benefits across GP services, social care and healthcare is our current goal. Our GP and social care members create a different dialogue in the HR space and I look forward to delivering change with them and our healthcare colleagues.
In the meantime my book of the month is The Other Side of Innovation by Vijay Govindarajan, a great thought leader on innovation and execution. The book is about solving the execution challenge and if we feel overwhelmed by the task ahead, is a great inspiration and I recommend it as a good read.
Have a good week.
